U.S. Pat. No. 4,510,876 issuing on Apr. 16, 1986 discloses method and apparatus for registering the vamp portion of a shoe relative to previously positioned shoe quarters. The shoe quarters are first registered and clamped within a pallet. The vamp is next positioned over the thus registered shoe quarters and the tongue portion of the vamp is clamped. The vamp is now slightly distorted so as to align certain of its edges relative to edge guides in the pallet leaf that is holding the shoe quarters down. The thus distorted and registered vamp is now further clamped by another leaf of the pallet that is rotated downwardly into position.
The above described method and apparatus for registering and clamping a distorted vamp is not particularly desirable for registering and clamping a large vamp such as is encountered with a cowboy boot. In this regard, the large cowboy boot vamp must be distorted or folded considerably more in order to accomplish a registration of the vamp edges with respect to other portions of the cowboy boot. In doing this, the large vamp would have such large folds that they could not be registered and clamped for automatic sewing according to the method and apparatus disclosed in U.S. Pat. 4,510,876.